$95
Problem
The most driven and driving developer on your team, who also happens to be the administrator for the internal wiki, comes to you and asks why your end-user documentation isn’t in a customer-facing wiki. Or your vice-president’s son recently bragged to her about having made 150 edits on the World of Warcraft wiki, and now she wants to know why her business unit’s products are not supported with a wiki.
Solution
Rather than stammering something about Wikipedia’s latest scandal, or reaching for imperfectly phrased responses that sound like lame excuses, do your homework and learn best practices from others who are implementing wikis.
Also, realize that you may find reasons not to implement a wiki based on studying the potential community and time you’d spend in arbitration with community members on contentious issues, or you may discover that you can borrow aspects of a wiki’s benefits while still meeting business goals.
$95
By watching and listening to this presentation by Anne Gentle (that’s me) about wikis for end-user documentation, you can:
- Learn from other examples of wikis used for end-user documentation
- Evaluate the advantages and known limitations of using a wiki
- Determine if simply adopting wiki-like technology would be sufficient for your environment
- Get some judo moves for defending your stance for or against a wiki
In addition to an audio file of this 45-minute presentation, you obtain copies of the slides used for the presentation as well as access to a practice wiki area where you can try out wiki editing for yourself in a safe environment.
How do I know this presentation will help me in my current situation?
As an added bonus, you can contact me to ask up to three questions about your particular situation, as if I were your team’s personal digital coach for wikis.
I became interested in using wikis for documentation after researching a few blog entries for the topic while working at BMC Software. After interviewing several technical writers who were maintaining wikis, I decided a hands-on apprenticeship by volunteering as a wiki maintainer would be the most efficient approach to learning about wikis and collaborative documentation.
I have been volunteering for the One Laptop Per Child project, writing end-user documentation for children across the world using the XO laptop, the open source project that should change the way education happens in many nations. I am also interested in DITA and a structured authoring approach to collaborative editing and have been working on Infoslicer, a project that enables wikislicing, where wiki articles are extracted to DITA from a wiki in order to re-assemble the articles in another deliverable. I’ll be happy to hear feedback on this presentation from you and I sincerely hope you find it helpful.
As a reminder, you don’t need a PayPal account to make the purchase. Just look for the credit card logos and continue forward without creating a PayPal account if you don’t want to start one.